Hi guys,
I have tried Mandrake and RedHat before and thought I would delve into the challenge of Slackware. The first problem I encountered was getting the install CD to boot and recognize my SATA hard drives. After some research, I found a set of boot disk images labelled ICH5.i, install.1 and install.2 which when used allowed me to install slackware 10.0. During this installation, I was asked which kernel image I wanted to install. i took the advice of the setup program and a post on these forums and used the kernel that had goten me to that point which was the ICH5 one from the boot disk. I used mostly default settings during the install, including using the automatic LILO setup and installing it into the MBR. I assume that this installs in the MBR of the hard drive that I chose to put my root mount point on since there was no option to change this.

The problem I am having is that when I set my BIOS to boot from the hard drive that Slackware, and hopefully LILO is on, I get a message that says "There was a problem loading the operating system" or something very similar. No LILO boot menu is ever displayed.

My hard drive setup is as follows...
WD Raptor 76GB - NTFS Partition with Windows XP installed
WD Raptor 36GB - 2GB Windows Swap, 1GB Linux Swap and 33GB ext3 partition with slackware installed
IBM Deskstar 180GB 7200rpm 8mb cache - NTFS partition used download storage (MP3s, movies, etc.)

I have an MSI NEO FIS2R I875P motherboard with the intel ICH5R controller.

I thought the problem might be with LILO so I took a look at my /etc/lilo.conf file using exploref2s from Windows. Here are its contents...

----------BEGIN LILO.CONF-----------------------------------------------------------
# LILO configuration file
# generated by 'liloconfig'
#
# Start LILO global section
boot = /dev/hda
message = /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 1200
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
vga = 787
# Normal VGA console
# vga = normal
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x64k
# vga=791
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x32k
# vga=790
# VESA framebuffer console @ 1024x768x256
# vga=773
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x64k
# vga=788
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x32k
# vga=787
# VESA framebuffer console @ 800x600x256
# vga=771
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x64k
# vga=785
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x32k
# vga=784
# VESA framebuffer console @ 640x480x256
# vga=769
# End LILO global section
# Windows bootable partition config begins
other = /dev/hda1
label = Windows
table = /dev/hda
# Windows bootable partition config ends
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sdb2
label = Linux
read-only
# Linux bootable partition config ends
-------------------END LILO.CONF----------------------------------------------------

Now I do notice that my Windows install is defined as /dev/hda1 but when I botted with the ICH5 kernel to install Slackware my Windows install was on /dev/sda1. Since my linux install is said to be in /dev/sdb1, I assume that the Windows part needs to be changed. I am unable to do this using exploref2s because it doesn't allow writing and I can't figure out how to get Knoppix to give me permission to write to this file either. I just booted with Knoppix to try to fix this problem.

Can anyone tell me if they think this is the problem and if so, how can I fix it? If this is not the problem, what is and how do I fix it? I'd appreciate it.

nevermind... apparently LILO was installed on hda which is my IBM Deskstar 180GB hard drive. I wish the install would give you the option of chosing which hard drive it goes on without having to do the manual setup. Thanks anyway.